Anthony Orozco / WITF
Seven families 25 people in all who had been held by immigration authorities at the Berks County Residential Center have been released to live with sponsors across the nation.
Their removal from detention does not mean they are granted asylum. They will continue their immigration cases while living with relatives and others willing to house them rather than in federal custody.
“So this is a great move; it’s not the end of the road,” said Amy Maldonado, a lawyer working pro bono with the Reading-based nonprofit ALDEA the People’s Justice Center. “We don’t know what’s happening yet but we’re very happy to see the Biden administration stop jailing children unnecessarily.”
Immigrant advocates and lawyers have long decried conditions at the Aurora ICE facility, pointing to instances of medical neglect, forced-labor allegations and infectious-disease outbreaks as examples of the sub-standard quality of care there. The facility currently houses around 200 ICE detainees, as well as a few dozen U.S. Marshals detainees. But the facility has space for over 1,500 ICE detainees, a capacity that it got close to reaching in the summer of 2019, during a season of increased border crossings. Proponents of using private prisons typically argue that they keep costs down; opponents say that s at the cost of human rights.
The Biden administration has already issued an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to stop renewing contracts with private prison companies. So far, however, Biden has not ordered the Department of Homeland Security to cut ties with private prison companies, such as the GEO Group, much to the dissatisfaction of immigrant-rights advo
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Updated: 1:52 PM EST Mar 1, 2021 A detention center in Berks County that has been the target of years of protests is no longer housing illegal immigrant families.U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (R-Pa.) said no one is living at the Berks County Residential Center near Reading.An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told Casey the remaining families were released Friday afternoon. This is a long overdue step to deliver justice to vulnerable migrant families, including children, Casey said in a tweet. The next step is to permanently close the center so that no future family or child is forced to go through what these families have endured. The facility is owned by the county and was contracted by the federal government to house immigrant families seeking asylum in the U.S.
Friday, February 26, 2021 Aid groups say ICE stopped jailing immigrant families at two South Texas sites, but they re still open Posted By Sanford Nowlin on Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 1:27 PM Wikimedia Commons Immigrant-rights groups have long called for the closure for the private family detention center in Karnes City, south of San Antonio. The government has stopped using two private prison facilities south of San Antonio for detaining immigrant families, instead turning them into temporary stop-offs where asylum seekers get medical checks, immigrant-aid groups said. However, that transition by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn t go far to reverse the hardline immigration policies of the Trump administration, those groups argue.